Easy Methods for Creating Caption Tracks in Camtasia Studio 8

Have you been looking for a (mostly) automated way to create caption tracks for your videos? In an effort to get you right into it, we’ve created a pair of video tutorials that outline popular captioning methods.

The first is called “Speech-to-Text” and it works in tandem with the Windows voice recognition feature to generate text from your video narration. To learn more, watch this short tutorial:

The second method is for those of you that write scripts for your videos – called “Sync-with-Script.” After importing your script text, you just need to tweak the caption breaks on the timleine. Interested? Watch this:

Josh Holnagel is an Instructional Designer on the User Assistance team at TechSmith. He uses Camtasia for instructional video magic, also makes art, and typically detests traveling.

Josh, is there any way I can use the Caption tool as a transcriber. Here’s my problem, I record SMEs while they’re presenting via Live Meeting. I record the video via Camtasia and sync it up with the conference call audio, which is recorded using a device that plugs from my phone into my mic jack. I want to be able to make a transcription of the presentation using the Caption option. As you know the Caption option first learns you voice via you, the presenter repeating a prepared statement. Since my presenter is on a conference call, I can’t use this option. However, was wondering if I could record presenter making the statement then play that when prompted by Camtasia. Is this possible? Is there a better way? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

jholnagel

Hi Walter,

Thanks for the comment. I hope I can answer your questions.

First, I should point out that is really Windows that handles the voice training and speech recognition – Camtasia just makes use of it.

Secondly, I’m not sure if you have gone through the voice training, but it is not very brief. There are quite a few training statements that have to be read. Each one has to be spoken before clicking to proceed to the next. It has been a while since I completed it, but I seem to remember it taking at least 20 minutes, so I don’t know how time effective it would be to voice-train for each SME. However, it’s likely be possible to train Windows to recognize a recorded voice. You would need a way to play the voice directly into a microphone for best results, I suppose. I also could not predict what type of accuracy loss might occur being that you would be playing a recording of a telephone call, instead of speaking directly into he microphone. Even with thorough training, the speech recognition will not be 100% accurate.

Finally, are you looking for a true transcription or are you interested in captioning videos? I am wondering because if you use Speech-to-Text in Camtasia, it will produce a series of captions which you can then export, but the exported files will be either .smi or .srt and would need some conversion to .txt or .doc. Again, it is possible, but just would add some time to the process. Ultimately, these little things might prove that just listening to the audio and manually transcribing is the quicker way.

Hope this helps!

Tom R.

Another option might be to train the Windows speech recognition software on your voice, and then repeat (using your own voice) everything the SME says, and let the speech recognition software transcribe *your* voice. I believe this is how many professional transcriptionists do it.

Introduction Meet Gary Lee Walters. He’s a hard-working, qualified learning facilitator, who teaches and lectures about law. In October of 2011 he founded his own website, StretLaw™, an eLearning resource focused on law tuition

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